


Unsung

by 221b_hound



Series: Unkissed [44]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Memorials, Post-Reichenbach, gratitude
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-03 00:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6589021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock has a reason to be grateful to an unsung hero. John has something to show his husband about a once unsung hero of his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unsung

**Author's Note:**

> [Postman's Park](http://www.postmanspark.org.uk/) is probably my favourite little park in London, and is very close to St Bart's. It's pretty and peaceful and a lovely place to watch people, flowers and the bees.

‘It’s not your fault, John.’

John nodded, but said nothing. He merely sat on the bench, facing the flowers and, beyond them, the wall covered in glazed ceramic tiles.

Sherlock wanted to say John’s name again, because for the last quarter hour, the only time John moved or reacted was when Sherlock said his name. Not much. John’s chin would lift a fraction. The corner of his mouth would twitch. His eyes would flicker towards Sherlock, but not settle on him. And then he’d subside back into this brooding pose.

Instead, Sherlock sat beside his husband. He pulled off his glove with his teeth – the other arm was in a sling - and laid his bare fingers over John’s wrist. He slipped two fingers just into the gap at the top of John’s black glove and then rested them there.

John moved for the first time, tilting the smallest fraction so that his upper arm pressed against Sherlock’s.

‘I know it’s not my fault,’ said John softly at last, his first words since they arrived at Postman’s Park, ‘But it’s not right.’

‘It’s the life of a secret serviceman, John.’

‘It’s his death that’s bothering me.’ He pressed harder against Sherlock’s arm, so that Sherlock would know the comment wasn’t meant as a snipe. Sherlock showed his comprehension by turning his head to brush a kiss against John’s hair.

Sherlock understood John’s unhappiness over the mans’ death, but he could be nothing but grateful that the operative – one of the many at Mycroft’s beck and call – had taken the killing shot that would have killed John. He was sorry for the man’s death, he was, but it was in some ways only abstract, buried under the relief.

_John, my John, my love, my John, still here with me._

The case had been difficult from the start, but initially seemed one destined for a blog post, a bizarre little trifle. Catherine Shelley kept finding small trinkets moved around her home, as though a poltergeist was fussy about the mantle - which never gathered dust though she deliberately left it undusted. She’d sent a query to Baker Street, refusing to believe in ghosts.

It had escalated quickly, however, and soon they’d discovered the Ukrainian spy creeping into Ms Shelley’s home, sending a skinny tween recruit crawling up the chimney like a Dickensian waif and carving out sooty bricks in order to break into a neighbouring home on the circuit of Georgian homes. The child was wiry but the chimney grouting was hard work. It took time.

The neighbouring home belonged to a public servant high in the echelons of MI6, who was handling delicate negotiations for the exchange of captured operatives, among other things. The Ukrainians hoped to find their own men without having to hand over MI6’s men, and one enterprising chief had hit on this as a potential solution. Break in, torture the public servant, get the intel on the exchange (for starters) and run.

The Ukrainian Fagin-and-protégé team were nearly through the chimney walls when Sherlock worked it out, alerted Mycroft while on his way to Shelley’s house, and bowled through the front door to find the woman, bloodied and unconscious, and the waif half way up the chimney.

The Ukrainian, standing guard, went at Sherlock with a poker.

Sherlock whirled out of the way, snatched up the hearth shovel, and a kind of clunking swordfight took place while John saw briefly to Ms Shelley. (Easier to let the waif stay up the chimney for the time being.)

A quick check to see she was breathing, and then John turned as the Ukrainian swung at him with the poker. Without breaking stride, John seized the fire guard, brought it up as a shield and then, over the top of it, punched the Ukrainian in the face.

The Ukrainian failed to fall down. His head snapped back, blood gushed from his nose, and the murderous look in his eye became profoundly personal. He was a strong brute, and vicious as he brought the poker to bear, fighting both John and Sherlock at once. Despite their best efforts, the spy’s ferocious backswing caught Sherlock a blow on his forearm (greenstick fracture of the ulna, it later turned out). John risked a forward push, attempting to use the fire guard like a bulldozer scoop to push the Ukrainian into the fireplace itself.

And now was when the bastard got a hand on his gun, which had fallen from its resting place on the mantelpiece. He aimed at John and would have pulled the trigger – except that from the door that crashed open, a gun fired.

Later, Sherlock had to concentrate to separate the things that happened almost simultaneously.

John pulled away from the guard, letting it go as he threw himself to the ground.

The MI6 bullet plunged through the decorative grating and lodged only shallowly in the Ukrainian’s belly.

The Ukrainian jerked the barrel of his gun towards the new threat and fired.

And instantly after those three things, Captain DeLorenzo’s folded to his knees, leaving blood and bone and brain matter all over the wall and his colleague behind him.

The Ukrainian might have tried again, only Sherlock and John together had pushed the fire guard viciously into the bastard’s torso, against the shallow wound, and then up under his jaw, just as the kid recruit slipped and fell out of the chimney onto his head. Jaw broken, gun dropped, spies captured. At the cost of one life.

In the way of MI6, DeLorenzo’s murder would be ascribed to ‘killed in action’. The secret service could be very secret indeed. His family would be financially supported, but the details of his death would not be shared. His timely intervention that had saved John’s life was not something for which they could be thanked.

As if John or Sherlock could thank them for such a thing. As if a medal, even if DeLorenzo could be publicly recognised with one, would comfort his wife and son.

John had attended the funeral, though from a distance. Sherlock had… attended John.

Afterwards, they’d gone to St Bart’s – Sherlock’s new case required him to examine a left leg found bobbing down the Thames inside a replica of the Cutty Sark. Done with that,  John had quietly led them here, to the nearby Postman’s Park.

‘Have you been here before?’ John asked Sherlock at last.

‘In passing.’ Sherlock had walked through the park several times. He had an intimate knowledge of London’s streets and all its alleys and shortcuts. He knew about the park in abstract, and the wall of tiles that had been erected in commemoration of civilians who’d given their lives in acts of courage. He’d never really stopped to look, though.

‘I haven’t been here in a long time. Not since you came back, after Moriarty.’

Sherlock hardly even flinched at the name any more, or at the reference to his time away, when John thought him dead. He and John had come so far since those soul-scraping, lonely days.

‘There’s this thing I never told you about. I thought you’d think it… stupidly sentimental. Later, I thought it might upset you that we did it. Or maybe I just… I had you back, and we were together, and I didn’t want to dwell on it. But DeLorenzo’s death made me think about it. About… unsung heroes.’ John rose and took off his glove too, so he could hold Sherlock’s hand skin-to-skin. ‘Come on. I’ll show you.’

Intrigued, though already now suspecting what they were about to see, Sherlock walked with John to the wall; along the row of 19th century names of men, women and children, to the end of the wall, to the tile that seemed very like the others, but was a 21st century addition.

It read:

SHERLOCK HOLMES  
Consulting Detective * Aged 31  
His observations and actions  
saved countless people from harm  
including a grateful Henry Knight

At the end was that fateful 2012 date.

Sherlock stared, his response far from the scorn that John had once feared. Far, too, from the distress that had once been the automatic reaction at any prompt to think of that day, its causes and consequences.

Sherlock squeezed John’s hand. John squeezed back.

‘It was Henry’s idea. He was a good friend to me, back then. One of the ones who stood by your memory with me. It’s not actually official,’ said John as they both looked at the tile, ‘They haven’t added new names to this wall in a long time, and the people behind it weren’t disposed to let us add you, given… given what the papers said. But Henry’s kind of loaded, if you remember. He had one made and we put it up together in the dead of night. A proper secret mission. It made us both laugh at a time when we needed it. They authorities found out and took it down a month later. So Henry made another and we put it up again. We were on the fourth, I think, when they gave up on it or lost interest. I thought they might have taken it down again, once you came back and were exonerated but,’ John shrugged, ‘I guess they decided not to. So here you are.’

Sherlock still wasn’t sure what to say. John didn’t seem to mind.

‘I used to come here sometimes, rather than your grave. This was a better reminder of what you’d achieved. I hated that fucking headstone.’

Sherlock turned to wrap his arms around John; to nose at his hair and kiss his brow and hug him close: a reminder to them both that those days were long gone.

Sherlock knew what to say, now.

‘Thank you, John.’

When nobody else had cared; when the world would rather believe he was a fake; when nearly everyone he’d ever helped had without question accepted the lie he’d told to save John Watson; John had never swerved in his belief. Henry Knight had been staunch, too, by stalwart John’s side.

Until John, Sherlock hadn’t known what it was like to have someone believe in him. John’s belief made Henry’s more real, somehow. More acceptable, in that Sherlock wasn't suspicious of Henry's motives, or thought them childish. It warmed him, that someone other than John had held onto faith in him.

John turned slightly so that he could slot his body next to Sherlock’s, to hold him close. He tilted up his chin so that they could kiss.

‘I don’t suppose we can really make a plaque for Alex DeLorenzo,’ John observed eventually.

‘I suppose not,’ Sherlock conceded. But then he bent to pick up a stone he saw in the garden, and he knelt on the ground before the wall. Beneath his rogue, unofficial plaque, he scratched these words into the brick:

ALEX DELORENZO  
Public Servant * Aged 28  
He saved the life of John Watson-Holmes  
and in doing so, lost his own.  
He will always be remembered with gratitude.

John nodded. It didn’t do any good to DeLorenzo or to his family, but since this was all they could do, it’s what they did.

They called at Angelo’s for a late lunch of pasta and tiramisu, which they ate at their usual table, with the candle Angelo always insisted on. Sherlock kept stealing mushrooms from John’s plate, and when John complained, Sherlock fed them to John and kissed him after each bite. This led John to feeding Sherlock tiramisu and more kissing (and to Angelo watching them, unabashed. His was a romantic soul.)

Later at home, although it was only mid-afternoon, Sherlock and John changed into pyjamas and lay down together in their bed: to kiss, to hold each other, to murmur _I love you_ and _I’m so glad you’re here_. To honour the sacrifices made by and for each other, and by other people, which had given them this gift of time and second chances.

To live well, and with love, and to be, in their way, the song left behind by the unsung heroes.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has been so supportive of [my book.](http://www.narrellemharris.com/books/the-adventure-of-the-colonial-boy/) If you've read it, please [consider this too.](http://221b-hound.tumblr.com/post/142513490670/hello-all-you-lovely-people-and-if-you-have) <3 to you all.


End file.
